The Scandinavian Home: Landscape and Lore. The Frick Art Museum, Pittsburgh. September 27, 2025 – January 11, 2026
“Featuring stunning landscapes, portraits, furniture, and decorative arts, this exhibition comprises more than 100 works from the private collection of Pennsylvania-based art collectors David and Susan Werner. The Werners’ collection includes furniture, ceramics, glass, painting, textiles, sculpture, graphics, and metalwork from eighteenth through the mid-twentieth century Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Finland.”
The catalogue, The Scandinavian Home: Art and Identity 1880-1920, includes an essay by the scholar Jan Kokkin, who wrote Gerhard Munthe as the Creator of a New Style.
The website includes a link to the labels for each of the works. They will whet your appetite for a visit. There are several textile works included, listed in this excerpt from the catalog label document.
Helena Hernmarck Videos
The New York Handweavers Guild maintains an extensive list of films and videos on fiber topics. Six videos featuring Swedish artist Helena Hernmarck are included. The videos are a wonderful opportunity to go behind the scenes with Hernmarck about the inspiration for her tapestries and her design and weaving processes. The videos are in this list. Just scroll down to the “H” entries for the Hernmarck videos (if you aren’t distracted by the Olga De Amaral and Sheila Hicks videos along the way).
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Upcoming Nordic Textile Classes
North House Folk School in Grand Marais, Minnesota, has released their upcoming weaving class information, and several have a Scandinavian connection: Nordic Designs in Boundweave; Rölakan Rug Weaving; Scandinavian Roots: Weaving on the Rigid Heddle Loom; and Scandinavian Squareweaving on a Tabletop Warp-Weighted Loom.
Vesterheim 2026 Textile Study Tour to Norway — “Red List”
May 24-26, 2026. Explore some of the textiles and techniques that are considered endangered and are on the “Red List.” Many of the red list textiles are old techniques or are regional variations on more familiar techniques and textiles.The tour will travel from Bergen to Trondheim, with stops in several west coast communities. It includes a stay at the culture farm Bjerkem near Steinkjer, Norway, where students try some of the red list techniques.
A Woven Mitten Buried in a Bog
At the website of the Shetland Museum and Archives, the Textiles section leads to many interesting posts with several about Nordic-related textiles. In “A Fragment of Viking-Norse Life,” Curator Carol Christiansen describes the thumb and a portion of a woven mitten that was discovered buried in a peat bog in Foula, an island off the mainland of Shetland.
Finnish Rag Rugs in the Spotlight
Finnish rag rugs get full appreciation in a New York Times article, “A Finnish Artist takes Rags to Design Glory,” (by Aino Frilander, November 10, 2025. Photo by Vesa Laitinen for the NYT) The designer, Eija Rasinmaki, started with one loom in 1970 and now the company she founded sells 20,000 rugs per year. From the article, “For Ms. Rasinmaki, a rug is not just a rug, at least when it’s made by hand. Each rug is imbued with the tradition of its craft, as well as the spirit of the weaver.”
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